


things fall apart

by KilltheRhythm



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mild Horror, Portuguese nt mentioned, Slight Violence, lmao I still suck at tags, probably more than slight angst actually, ships are implied or one sided sorry, slight angst, title comes from chinua Achebe book, zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 01:35:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11325936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheRhythm/pseuds/KilltheRhythm
Summary: Jesse has bad luck. Or maybe it's more than bad luck, considering that the end of the world happens in the middle of the World Cup.





	things fall apart

Jesse crouched down behind the bench, breathing hard. There might be blood on his shirt still, but it's hard to tell in the low light. Wasn't it supposed to be bright out the entire time in the Russian summer? It wasn't, but that might've been because of the clouds.

He shuddered. It was cold here, especially out of the sun, and his shirt and jeans were mostly wet. The jacket he had been wearing earlier he'd taken off a while before. The memory of losing it-- or letting Marcus borrow it was fresh in his mind, and it stung. It hadn't been too long ago.

Russia was cold, even in the summer, and the entire national team had been instructed to bring jackets and long sleeve shirts and the like for the World Cup, even though they lived in England; home of shitty weather and gloom. Still, despite the sketchy stadiums and the bigoted fans and everything else, there was excitement to be held. The World Cup came once every four years, and to have one's name on the team sheet was prestigious. Jesse knew people who were shocked to be on it (Jenko and Keane) and people who would be shocked if they weren't (Henderson and Kane).

Marcus shared that excitement with him, buzzing from the bus to the plane to the next bus to the hotel, as it was his first World Cup and he literally could not stop bouncing in his seat. They'd celebrated with tiny glasses of champagne with all the other players, mingling with Colombians and Russians and Koreans, because joy was in the air. Everyone had made it, and he cheered with players he'd never met, and players he had, and players he'd dreamed of meeting. Not everyone could say they clinked glasses with Messi.

They'd all cracked jokes and chatted, Marcus trying to offload his glass to Jesse because he apparently didn't like the taste of champagne, Jenko and Chambo chatting with some spaniards, somehow managing to transcend the language barrier, Dier and Dele Alli trying to get Henderson to drink. Everyone was pleasant, club and national rivalries cast aside. There was nothing to worry about or fear yet. The reports of some mystery virus had only come in a week later, when everyone was comfortably settled in.

"Mystery virus?" Marcus had asked him, because he never checked the news. Jesse had, and out of a sense of being the big brother, didn't bother giving him the full details in fear of possibly scaring his younger friend.

"Yeah, but don't worry. Just eat right and remember your jacket and you'll be fine," he tells Marcus, and hopes that he sounds reassuring enough. There's no way that just practicing healthy habits was going to ensure everyone's safety though. Not when the largest reported outbreak was a ten minute drive out of Moscow.

In reality, the articles being published depicted the disease as being far worse than some flu. Shit, the one Hendo had shown him the morning before claimed that it was more dangerous than Ebola. But they were premier league footballers, the logic goes, much like other pitfalls of life, this wouldn't apply to them. Or at least that's what people started to repeat as CNN reported that there were claims of the entire nation of Russia going to be quarantined for safety's sake. Borders closed. No one in, no one out.

When the claims became true, the real panic started. Games weren't cancelled yet, but less and less fans showed up. He can't remember how it exactly happened, but there were people in the FIFA buildings that were infected, and then there were fights, and he remembered this man with greyish skin chomping down on Chambo's neck, and blood shooting everywhere, followed by Jenko beating the man to death. He'd never seen someone died before, let alone two as the infected man collapsed meters away from Chambo.

The World Cup was definitely off by then, if not for the fact that the players had started murdering people, but that zombies had overrun the whole thing. Marcus had begged him and the others to stay together, and they had. Keyword being had; considering that they'd been separated hours ago by a horde of what he thinks are-- were the Iranian national team.

The clouds break slightly, giving him a little more light and warmth. Jesse tried to guess what time it was based on the way the shadows fell, didn't want to waste the battery on his phone considering that both power and reception were spotty at best now.

Crunching footsteps behind him make Jesse whirl around. He grips the knife he'd pilfered from the kitchen tighter in his hands, ready to stab them. It didn't matter if it was fucking Ronaldo that was coming up on him, he was prepared. Someone was about to get a blade in the stomach, or worse.

Instead he's greeted with the sight of an incredibly disheveled Eric Dier. The blonde hadn't shaved in a few days, and looked like he hasn't slept in even longer. Like Jesse, he had a backpack and a knife, and the lower half of his jeans were covered in bloodstains. Jesse'd honestly thought that he'd died a while ago. Eric was one of the first to disappear, though now he looked healthy, or as healthy as one could be stranded in Russia.

"Jesus," Eric says, giving Jesse a once over "what happened to you?"

Jesse stood up completely, nerves still frazzled. "Yeah, but I could ask you the same."

"Mate, I'm not the one covered in blood."

Jesse looks down, and now the there is far more light, he can get a good look at his shirt. Indeed, it is mostly red now. He's soaked in it. He looks back at Eric. "Where's Dele?"

Eric grimaces at the mention of his best friend. The shorter man figures he's touched on an intimate subject. Jesse nods. There isn't a real need for words here. They sit in comfortable silence for a while, until Eric finally begins to tell him what happened.

\----

If there was ever an article that asked "where were you when the apocalypse started?" Eric would have a hell of a story. One that involved sudden confessions, large amounts of high intensity chase scenes and eventually, murder. Ah yes, the World Cup. International competitions were always fun, even if only for a chance to catch up with old friends from Portugal, despite the protests from his best friend. He'd always think of responding to the 'why didn't you just play for them?!'s with a 'I should've.'

And well, maybe he should have. There were more things alluring than just winning the euros. Even though he was born in England, had lived there for years and learned English first, it felt good to be speaking Portuguese again. It was one of the inconvenient truths that you denied to reporters, that more often than not it was more comfortable to speak in Portuguese. He'd be lying if he said he didn't think in it more than he did in English.

In addition to these two things, the good people of the Portuguese national team also had weed. Quality weed. According to Raphaël, better weed than what the Argentinians had (which was better than the weed that Razza or Jenko could find in the desolate landscape that was the current unpronounceable town they were in), so pretty fucking good. The hype for aforementioned weed was legendary, already starting to reach members of other teams.

In the world of professional sports one had to sneak around with their drug use, and smoking just days before a game was not Eric's shining moment, but half of the athletes here were doing it, making it seem like it was more okay. And weed was far from the worst drug to be found at World Cup (Jenko, Chambo and even Lallana himself all claim that they saw De Bruyne do a line of coke before the opening ceremonies).

He'd wandered back to the room he shared with Dele hours later to find his best friend pacing nervously around the room. Concern was all over Dele's face. Sometimes that was his default expression, but even through the fog in his mind, Eric could tell that he was legitimately worried.

"Where the fuck were you?" Dele asked, voice high enough to tell Eric that he's legitimately panicked. Cracks in it were imminent.

"Uh," Eric hoped his eyes aren't that red. He's still a little faded.

Dele stares at him and he knows that there is a lecture coming up. But he's older than Dele, old enough to make his own (stupid) decisions. He could call him out on any of the mistakes he's made in the past month easy, though it might not come out completely intelligently. "The entire nation is under fucking lockdown. There are zombies, Eric. Zombies! You can't just fuck around where ever you like!"

Internally, Eric has a fantastic speech where he points out that Dele is a hypocrite, and a million other things, concluding with how in the past month he'd been an asshole to him. Unfortunately, all he can actually come up with is "I didn't leave the hotel, relax."

"Relax?!" Dele was suddenly up in his face. "I can't fucking relax, Eric, the world is ending. Ending!"

Eric takes a few steps back, flopping onto his bed and his thoughts are consumed with the possibility that Dele can smell weed smoke on him. Then he remembers that Dele probably hasn't smelled weed before. There's words that should be had here, but he doesn't really have the mental capacity for it all right now. He was not exactly used to his best friend acting like a crazy girlfriend, but tried to blame that on the fact that he currently wasn't sober. Maybe he was just seeing things wrong.

Sleep started to sound really good, especially considering how soft these hotel beds are, a much better alternative than to dealing with Dele at the moment. Eric kicked off his shoes and snuggled up into the blankets. He could feel the other Brit flop down next to him, but decided to ignore it, even when he could sense the vibrations as again, the other man began to talk. Eric tunes it out, lies flat on his back and tries to sleep until he feels something above him.

Opening his eyes, he sees it is Dele. There's alcohol on his breath, he can tell now, and wants to yell hypocrite at him for getting on his case when he was the drunk one, but that proves to be impossible as Dele was trying to make out with him. Trying mostly unsuccessfully, as Eric repeatedly attempts to push him away, unable to keep him from repeatedly clambering on top of him. What does stop Dele is the door opening.

Adam muscles his way in through the door unabashedly, completely disregarding the current situation to tell them, very loudly "Guys! Zombies-- Chamb-- fuck. There are zombies, and they're in the hotel, and one of them got Chambo and Carl killed it and I think-- you have to get out of here."

There hadn't been any time to address what Dele had done, and there wasn't any time in the days after that as the world devolved rapidly. He'd banded together with some of the Portuguese players and a few Brazilian ones, camping up in hotels and houses as the number of people dropped exponentially (not like there were many to begin with). Dele was separated from him for a while, with some of the English teammates. They'd reunited when Eric was going through the lobby of yet another emptied hotel, looking for anything useful.

"Hey," Dele said cautiously. "Uh, what's up?"

Eric eyed him suspiciously. In the back of his mind he told himself that he shouldn't be on edge; that Dele was his friend. His best friend. "Nothing much, just the apocalypse."

Dele, already a little less cautious, chuckled and rolled his eyes. "C'mon mate, I-- damnit. I'm sorry Eric. I made things weird, I know. It's my fault. I'm sorry."

With that, Dele sat down on a chair next to Eric's bag, motioning for the other man to come and sit with him. Eric, sighing, moved to join him. "It's okay. I just don't feel that way about you, alright?"

Dele nodded, but he wasn't sure if the message had gotten through. "Oh."

"Like, we're best mates, but I don't mean that I love you when I say I love you, y'know?" Eric said.

"Yeah." Dele looked dejected. There was a long painful silence that hung in the air for a long time after that. Eric had felt bad about it, wondered for how long Dele had felt that way. They didn't make eye contact. "The zombies you know, I don't think they're zombies."

"Well yeah," Eric responded. He'd been the one who done most of the reading on the outbreak between the two of them. "They're not legit zombies, it's some prion disease that makes them act like it."

Dele continued to ask for information and Eric continued to fill him in. People were a rare sight, though encounters with the infected were not high in occurrence either. The power was spotty now; on in some places and off in others. Wifi was occasional. At least the running water hadn't been turned off anywhere they'd been to yet.

For some reason he knew that they were going to split again, go their separate ways. It was too awkward for them to have grouped up again. Dele had motioned for Eric to come into a hug, and he complied, until he felt something in Dele's pocket. Pulling away, he recognized it as one of the cases he kept in his backpack.

"The fuck?" He had exclaimed. Words like 'thief' and 'liar ' followed that. Dele had responded equally aggressively, and it all devolved into a tussle on the floor. There was a flash across Eric's vision as a hand went past his face. He'd expected a punch, but Dele was choking him.

Eric tried to leave out the rest of the details to Jesse while still managing to get the point across when he told him. By the end of it, Jesse's face was pale. "Wow. Yeah. That's-- that's intense."

He doesn't want to ask why Eric was all alone now, not when he still has the mental image of Dele Alli lying in a pool of his own blood in some random Russian hotel. Instead he just tries to shift the conversation off to something else. There's work to be done, but it's better to distract himself from it with conversation.

\----

Jesse hadn't realized how lonely he'd been before until that evening. Camped out in a house for once, they sat in front of the fireplace. It wasn't a real fireplace, just one of those where the wood was ceramic, but the heat was real. The power was out here, and the stove was electric, so the fire remained their only chance at cooking.

Sitting on the couch, the two teammates remained in partial silence. It wasn't that awkward, or at least Jesse hoped that. He'd tried texting Marcus's phone again, wasting precious battery for the small hope that his friend was alive to read it.

"So," Eric says, shifting on the couch "who else is alive?" Jesse raised a brow. "For England." Eric added.

Jesse makes a list in his head, and lets it narrow swiftly. There were people he knew were dead, like Chambo and Hart, and then there were some who he hadn't seen in long enough to figure that they were, Jenko and Lallana being among them. "I- I don't know. Not many. I haven't seen anyone in a while."

Eric looks dejected. "Dele was staying with some people. Maybe we can find them and group up?"

Jesse frowns. "Don't think that's a good idea. They could be zombies for all that we know."

Eric looks at him funny. "Mate, they're not zombies. They're not rotting. They just come after you."

"Their skin is grey. Zombies."

"It's a disease that makes you have zombie like symptoms-- not actual zombification."

Jesse is quiet for a moment, then looks determined. "Can you kill them the same way you kill zombies?"

"By shooting them in the head?" Jesse nods at those words. Eric appears thoughtful for a moment. "Yeah, that should work."

Jesse smiles at him, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "There are a few guns in this house."

Eric shifts around in the couch, getting tired. The days seemed so long now, with nothing to do but focus on staying alive. "We're gonna shoot them? We can't kill every infected person in Russia, Jesse."

Jesse stands up, though if it's to put up his bowl, get the guns or head off to bed is unknown. "Yeah, but we can protect ourselves while we try to get out of here."

The plan formulates the next day. Eric doesn't know Jesse all that well, but the shorter man is friendly and has a knack for setting things up. When the power miraculously comes back on, they use google maps to locate where exactly they are in Russia, and the quickest way out. They begin to plot out their route as detailed as they can using crayons, paper and a mini atlas.

"Liozna." Jesse says, pausing for Eric to write it down. "That's our best bet from here in Moscow. Says it only takes four days of walking to get there."

After everything is written down, route and all, things feel infinitely more finalized. They were going to try and escape Russia. Never in a million years did Eric ever think this would be his life. Even back when he lived in Portugal, training at Sporting, he didn't think that he'd make it pro, even less national team level. Adding the imminent apocalypse during the World Cup onto that and everything seemed surreal. He was just a lad from Lisbon, not a character on the Walking Dead.

They set out that afternoon, maps hidden in their backpacks surrounded by cans and any other kind of food they could get their hands on. Jesse tried not to think about what would happen if they couldn't cross the border, if they were kept in, because he didn't have an answer for that yet and it scared him. And what if Belarus was just as bad, or even worse? If he got there, and was able to go home, would there be a career for him? Would football be no more, and he'd have to go to university or become an electrician or something equally boring? Or maybe the rest of the world had come down with the disease and the human race was quickly going extinct. For all he knew, they could be some of the last people on the planet. He couldn't think about any of that. There was only pushing forward.

Walking together gives him an excellent chance to get to know his (possibly former, considering that everyone was dead) teammate. Within the first hour (graciously free of zombies for now) he has heard much about how great Portugal was, and if they survived and all was well, how they should go there to spend the rest of summer. The picture of warm beaches with bright sunshine oftentimes is the only thing that keeps them plodding through the desolate and chilly landscape that is Russia.

Oftentimes he wonders where all the people have gone. Zombies are few in this part of the city, but they haven't seen a single person either. It was incredibly isolating; walking on grey tarmac in a grey city underneath a grey sky. They'd only seen pigeons, which were also grey. Fitting, Jesse thought, but England wasn't much more colorful than this. After all, it rained nearly every day in his beloved Manchester.

The problem arises when they have just left the city. The zombies (or infected, as Eric calls them, because Jesus, Jesse, I told you they're not damn zombies) have all congregated together here to sleep seemingly, resting in heaps on the ground or on porches. They're all grey and withered looking, open sores on their skin and dull hair matted. Eric and Jesse scan the crowd for faces they know. There's a few they can recognize; James Rodriguez, Neymar and Toni Kroos amongst them. Despite all of Jesse's looking, he can't see Marcus in the groups of zombies. His heart swells slightly with hope.

"How the fuck do we get past this?" Eric asks Jesse in a low whisper.

Jesse makes a face when he's thinking that Eric already has memorized. "Go around them? We could backtrack and find a different path. I don't wanna walk through them."

Eric rolls his eyes. "Obviously we don't want to walk through them. But do you really think walking around is the better idea?"

Jesse gives him a look that screams "do you have a better idea?" They turn back as quietly as possible, and try to exit a few blocks further away. There are still zombies here, but less. Jesse, inching closer to the crossing that they have to make to get past this congregation, suddenly breaks into a dead sprint. Eric follows suit, running as hard as he can as now the bodies seem to have awoken. Zombies follow after them, footsteps loud in their ears, but this happens to be one of the times that being a professional athlete greatly helps, as they outrun the things. Chests heaving, they looked back when they were a good distance away. The zombies were turning back.

"We just," Jesse stops to breath heavily "we just outrun a pack of zombies." The ridiculousness of that statement seems to sink in, and he starts laughing.

Eric doesn't bother correcting him this time. "I've never ran faster in my life. I can't believe that just happened."

They stay on edge for the rest of the day, until the city bleeds out into endless suburbs and the sun starts to get low and their knees and feet start to hurt. The houses here all look the same and are all abandoned too, empty husks of things. Eerily enough, there are no cars to be seen anywhere.

The house looks equally creepy from inside. There are plenty of things in it to suggest that a family lived here; photos and toys and the parents' bottle of whiskey. Both the electricity and water work though, so Jesse takes the first nice warm shower in what feels like decades. A quick glance in the mirror afterwards shows that he still can't grow facial hair, but that he has the beginnings of dreads.

"Takes an actual apocalypse to make you realize how nice this all is, huh?" Eric says as they try to get to sleep. There are beds here, two in the children's room, but it doesn't seem right to sleep in them. Instead they push the mattresses onto the floor and sleep on them there, like doing otherwise would violate the privacy of this family's house that they had broken into. It's all vaguely disturbing, even though this hell had all broken out about two weeks ago.

Jesse doesn't respond. He stares at the ceiling. There are little glow in the dark stars put up there that still shine a faint green, set in constellation patterns. The Big Dipper is to their slight left. He tries not to think about Marcus, and if he had died. It's been days now.

"Jesse?"

The stars had already grown fainter over the course of the few minutes he'd been staring at them. Marcus was almost certainly dead. Jesse shudders and banishes that thought. "Yeah?"

Eric looks at him solemnly, and the moment their eyes meet he knows Eric knows what he's feeling. There's empathy there. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's not your fault."

"It's not yours either." Eric tells him, and Jesse thinks it's a funny thing, especially when Eric had killed his own best friend. Then again Jesse couldn't judge either. He had blood on his hands too.

"Yeah, but I'm like his bigger brother. I'm supposed to keep him safe, and I let him out of my sight for a minute and he just disappears instantly," Jesse fights back an oncoming voice crack. "He's probably dead, Eric. Dead. Gone."

"He could be alive still. Didn't see him with the zombies."

Jesse frowns at him intensely. The plastic stars above them have lost their glow. "Doesn't mean anything. Someone could've killed him." He pauses, sees Marcus, a face that'll be etched into his mind until he dies, and shakes his head. "I can't dwell on it."

They spend the rest of that night in a silence before they drift off to sleep, but wake up tired the next day. Eric raids the pantry to find shitty instant coffee that seems to have lost its kick. It's not much, but the taste of bitter coffee flavored water does a little to wake them up.

Jesse sips some, and winces. He wishes there was tea to be found here in Russia, but it's a small complaint considering that most everyone was dead. They'd woken up earlier than expected, watery pink sun rising through a pale yellow sky and peaking through the curtains of the house. Eric makes small talk with him as he cooks pancakes on the stove, humming during the small gaps of silence. For a moment he can try and pretend that this is a normal.

Normal that is, until about five minutes into their walk. The day is nice, or nice by Russian standards, considering that it is cold, even though these new clean clothes he'd found in one of the houses and rarely sunny. It shines brightly off of the smooth dark bark belonging to the trees in the surrounding woodlands. He'll enjoy the morning brightness while it lasts. It offers a pretty view.

Before he knows it, out of the trees a zombie rushes, half stumbling and half running, heading in their direction. It smells dirty and unwashed, with infected sores and greasy hair, but it wasn't rotting, and it was moving fast. Now he understood why Eric didn't want to call them zombies. There's not much time to think before it has knocked his friend to the ground. It takes all of Eric's strength to keep the thing from biting him, but he knows it won't last. His arms shake. He closes his eyes, prepares for death because there are only seconds until his muscles give out and--

Death never comes, as when he opens his eyes, the infected had fallen off of him. Jesse stood above him panting, holding a very large, sharp stick. Looking back at the body on the ground, the hole in its chest was near identical to what would be produced by aforementioned stick.

"I got you," Jesse says, breaking into a brief, dark smile. The zombie twitches on the ground again. Jesse's got its blood spattered on his clothes, effectively ruining them, and Eric is sure he's covered in it too.

"Who the fuck was that?" He asks. Jesse shrugs. "Was it someone we know?"

Jesse turns the body onto its back with a flick of the toe of his boot. The head lulls, but it is unmistakeable. Jesse had put a sharp piece of wood through the heart of Harry Kane. Surprisingly, his friend looks less than disturbed that he'd just effectively killed their former England teammate and occasional captain.

Instead, Jesse nods solemnly and ushers Eric up. They quickly resume their trek down the street, leaving Harry's body splayed out on the tarmac like roadkill. It is a sight that quickly begins to haunt Eric's dreams and thoughts. Why this was the thing to get to him remained a mystery.

While Russia is an absolutely enormous country, the great majority of it is incredibly uninhabited. Even though they were in western Russia, the European half and not the barren icescapes and tundra of Siberia, the vast majority of their day's walk was spent through the wilderness. It was pretty to look at throughout the day, Eric and Jesse stopping to eat lunch in a cleared field, but the beauty quickly gave way to fear as the sun approached the horizon, casting long shadows on the street.

There were still no houses or cars to be seen. "The fuck are we gonna do?" Jesse asked.

"Continue walking?" Eric said, though not firmly. Their map told them that there was a handful of small towns on the road to Belarus, but he had no idea how close or far they were to them.

"For how long?" Jesse asked incredulously.

"Until we see a house. You have a problem with that?" Eric says. There aren't any houses in sight. In fact, there weren't going to be any for the next few miles.

The walk seems endless, as trees blended into tree after tree after tree, the occasional shrub or bush or hill the only thing to break up the monotony. The distance they covered could not be figured out; only the sun's slow and steady descent from the sky could yield any timeframe.

Jesse's legs start to hurt by the time the sun has completely disappeared. The bag on his back was heavy, holding food and water and maybe a few weapons. He can tell Eric is feeling the same way, just trying to be stoic. It's present in the way that Eric refuses to tear his eyes away from the road ahead, like doing so would mean he could not continue on any longer.

At the moment Eric wants to sit down on the pavement and say fuck it. That would be a lot nicer than forcing himself to push one foot after another after another on endless road. He's now convinced that the road doesn't end, that there is no end to Russia and that he'll continue to walk until an infected person gets to him or he dies. Whichever happens first.

With night having fallen there is no longer a way to track the time. The stars make a nice backdrop though, twinkling and pretty in the tar black night. The moon was also present, near full and providing some light to guide them, though now Eric was sure that they could fall asleep and not stop walking. He doesn't know how long it takes them, and they're half asleep when it happens, but they come across a house finally, nearly buried in the trees.

He wakes up sprawled out on a dusty old couch, a crick in his neck and a soreness in his legs. There isn't anyone else in the house aside from him and Jesse, which is a real blessing considering that they'd barely had any energy left to check the house or lock the doors. Oftentimes people posed a greater threat than the infected, especially when you broke into their houses.

A quick check of his phone told him that it was four PM. He wondered why he hadn't bothered to check it the night before. Unsurprisingly, his battery was low, there was no reception, no wifi and he couldn't get cellular data. He wondered how late they'd stayed up walking.

There's not much of a point in waking up Jesse any time soon, especially considering that there wasn't a real chance that they were going to start up again this late into the day. His stomach interrupted his thoughts, rumbling.

The power is off in this house, as well as the water. A quick test with the stove indicated that there wasn't any gas either. Amazingly, the house also lacked a fireplace, unlike relatively every house Eric had been in in the entire country. He resorts to eating a stale bag of saltines, which is how Jesse finds him when he wakes up.

They both look like wrecks, new(ish) clothes already soiled with blood and dirt, faces gaunt and tired. Jesse's baby face is greatly diminished by this, now looks like he's seen too much shit to be young. Still, he smiles all the same at Eric, nabbing some of his saltines as he resumed his perch on the arm of the couch.

This house had already been ransacked, though whether that be before or during the zombie apocalypse was unknown. There aren't any clothes there for them to switch into, and the only food item they can find aside from a bottle of vodka is a can of chicken broth. They take both.

There isn't a real reason for them to go yet, too much of the day already lost, so instead they stay inside the house and play the board games they can find, though most of them have instructions only in Russian. There's not much else to do, and any thinking done would only make them sadder, so Eric resorts to playing Jesse in monopoly again, even though he knows there is no way that he'll win against the shorter man. By now their phones have died, and are unable to be charged. Eric assumes that this was what life was like pre technology.

They go star watching on the roof once night falls, painting the sky indigo. You can see everything here, so unlike London or Lisbon, where the stars remained hidden during the night. Eric wonders if the constellations have different names in English than Portuguese. Neither of them were great at pointing out what clusters of stars were the actual deal or just a satellite and a few bright objects, but they put names that they can remember to shapes that they think are legitimate patterns.

"If there's any good that comes of this," Jesse says, then stops. He might say 'it's that we're friends now,' but he doesn't finish the sentence. It stings a little, though Eric knows that this is real life and not a John Green novel. There's no moral to be learned here, the world was just fucked up and they'd gotten caught in the middle of it. He knows that he isn't friends with Jesse and won't be after this, that there's no connection here. If there was ever another England national team and they both got called up, they probably still wouldn't talk.

As if he had to make his point more poignant, Jesse reaches into his pocket to pull out a cigarette. Eric had noticed them in the house earlier, and hadn't taken them. He didn't smoke cigarettes (a good habit of his for once), though he'd seen his fair share of premier league footballers light one up after a long night of clubbing. It was strange to see a professional footballer do it, higher standards and all, but everyone had their vices.

That doesn't change the fact that it is incredibly surreal to see his teammate smoke. Tiny baby faced Lingard, who hung out with Rashford and seemed closer to fourteen than twenty four, takes a drag from the thing like he'd done it for years. They make eye contact, long enough to be considered awkward, but it wasn't. There was a bit of a stare down to it, until Jesse offers him the cigarette with one fluid motion of his wrist.

Eric shakes his head. He limited his smoking to weed. Later that night he dreams of his dead friends and teammates, surrounded by swirling smoke that smelled vaguely of cigarettes. He can't seem to be able to get good sleep anymore, wonders if he ever will.

The next day is just like the others, endless walking. He and Jesse have exhausted conversation topics (there's only so many times they can debate over whether Joe Hart is losing his hair or not) and now resort to silence. It's not really better this way, but neither of them can come up with anything.

The hours blend into one another, endless skies full of clouds or stars above them, and the ever present mangled tarmac below. It reminds Eric of when he read dante's inferno, that there was a good amount of traveling that must be done to get to the next circle of hell. Maybe that was what they were doing at the moment. Perhaps he had actually died back before this entire thing started, and this was purgatory, or even worse, hell. Suddenly he is brought back to going to mass at the big Catholic cathedral in Lisbon. He can almost smell the incense, taste the wine.

But nothing of any interest happens aside from avoiding the occasional group of infected people, and those encounters are equally devoid of personality and excitement. He feels as grey as the decrepit houses they pass by in old towns left empty. The stars are nice, but he's gotten used to their presence. Now they serve only as a navigational tool. Mostly Jesse and Eric think about their futures, if there were careers to go home to when they got out. They assume that the rest of Europe is fine because it is hard to be motivated if they think otherwise. Eric supposed that he might go back to Portugal. Jesse thinks that he's sick and tired of grey and gloom. Perhaps he'll move leagues as well.

On day four, or what they assume is day four, as counting how long it's been had been growing increasingly difficult, Jesse and Eric come across an actually functioning car. They'd slept in a broken one the night before, but this one looked less broken down. Jesse'd wondered if it worked, and a quick once over of the vehicle suggested that it did.

"We should drive this out of Russia. It'll be a lot more fast." Jesse says, eyeing the steering wheel. He moves over to the trunk and pops it open. Nothing looks wrong. He's suddenly thankful for hours spent in his grandpa's car shop.

Eric stares at him. "You have the keys?"

Jesse laughs, shaking his head. "Get in the front seat and let me work my magic."

Eric complies, dropping down into the soft seat. Through the windshield he sees Jesse begin to fiddle with something underneath the popped hood. From the angle he is at it is impossible to tell what is going on, but Jesse keeps his head cast towards the innards of the car, determined. The only noises audible are those of him tinkering with the bits and pieces. Suddenly, the thing roars to life.

Eric stares at the hood, then Jesse, and finally the dashboard in a mix of shock and awe. The tank is more full than not, and everything looks in decent condition. Jesse, having already closed the hood, hops into the shotgun seat, beginning to unfold the map.

As Eric begins to drive, he realizes that he doesn't really know where they are. There's a vague idea in his head, but there was no way for Jesse or him to figure out if they were behind, ahead of or on schedule. Their phones had died back when they were in the last house, but Jesse was attempting to decipher the atlas.

Both Jesse and Eric decide that if they just continue to head west that they will eventually reach Belarus. Eric tries to remember if Russians drove on the right or left side of the road, but then realized that that didn't matter. He hadn't seen a moving car in weeks.

The radio stations are all out except for one, and it plays the blues. Through the partially broken speakers of the car it sounds ancient and terrifying. Jesse shuts it off before the third song could start. They long for something musical though, hadn't heard it in what seemed like a lifetime.

Luckily, there are two CDs in the car, one being the debut album of the Velvet Underground and the other being a Mozart for infants album. Unanimously they decide on the Velvet Underground album. The imagery of the sun rising to the steady build up of Heroin and Russia slipping past as the viola shrieked in Venus in Furs will linger in their minds for months. Jesse wonders if he could ever forget any of this, if he would even try to. They're not good memories, but they are strong ones.

Eventually the tree cover on either side of the road begins to thin and then clear, and more signs of civilization appear. Signs hint at the fact that the border may be approaching, albeit not in English. Eventually there is one in both the Cyrillic script as well as English that says "welcome to Belarus."

"This is it?" They say in unison. It seemed unfairly easy. No wall or fence or even detection device had they driven through or past. They were unharmed, and in passable health. There were no zombies to fight.

It seems anticlimactic. Their struggles were minimal, and danger was never too powerful, only vaguely omnipresent. They'd escaped to freedom without a hitch, safely in a car. Maybe they felt a little disappointed by the lack of excitement in their escape.

They get out of the car for a moment. Both of them stare out at Russia for quite possibly the last time. If other people had made it out, they didn't know. Somehow their escape was far easier than the weeks they'd spent beforehand, killing and running to keep alive. Eric felt guilty. Deli was long gone by now. Jesse wondered if Marcus was still alive, and realized that there was not a chance that he hadn't died.

After all, everyone else had.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if u actually read through this entire pile of crap. this is what happens when im in the middle of writing other stuff. no clue why I wrote this but I did and I'm not proud of it. will probably delete later. also I don't like dele alli
> 
> peace out bitches


End file.
